Tony Abbott's indigenous adviser calls for more money

Less than a month from the federal budget, one of Prime Minister Tony Abbott's Aboriginal affairs advisers has called for a doubling of the number of indigenous rangers working to protect almost 50 million* hectares of land across the continent.

There are just 730 rangers working ''on country'' to manage weeds and pests and encourage biodiversity on 60 declared Indigenous Protected Areas covering 48 million hectares.

But Bruce Martin, one of 12 members of Mr Abbott's Indigenous Advisory Council, said the program was a ''pivotal'' source of employment in remote areas and should be expanded.

''What this government needs to start thinking about … is how we look at building up these numbers,'' he said.

''We do need to look at how we double the rangers who are doing this work over a huge area of land.''

Mr Martin, a Wik-Ngathan man raised in Aurukun in far north Queensland, also said the language sometimes used to describe the ranger jobs was inaccurate.

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''When people talk about ranger jobs being 'pretend', I think that does an injustice to the work that's being done,'' he said. ''Everyone puts a lot of weight in jobs in the mining sector in regional areas, but the fact of the matter is the mining sector employs a quarter of what the health sector employs.

''The ranger jobs have been absolutely critical.''

He said they got people in areas of little employment out on country and enabled them to fulfil their cultural obligations at the same time.

''I can't walk down the street in Aurukun without people bailing me up for a job,'' he said.

''When you try and engage people, in Aurukun for example, in work-for-the-dole jobs, it's a real battle to engage them. It's not a struggle to engage them to work on country.''

Billionaire mining magnate Andrew Forrest, chairman of the government's review into indigenous training and employment programs, is expected to report to the Prime Minister on his findings in the near future.

* Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the request was to protect almost 500 million hectares of land. The correct figure is 50 million hectares.